The present invention is generally directed to shredders and, more specifically, to a shredder head adapted to monitor the thickness of material and provide an alert, an indication of thickness, and/or stop the operation of a shredder.
A shredder generally comprises a motor, gears, and a plurality of shredder blades which are driven by the motor through the gears. Conventional shredders operate the motor at the same power level regardless of the material presented to be shredded. The shredder motor may be capable of operating at higher power for a short period of time, but to increase the operating life of the motor and reduce power consumption the motor's power level is set to less than its operating maximum. The motor operating at a single power level may be unable to shred material of greater thickness, while consuming more power than necessary on less demanding shredding tasks.
It may be advantageous to provide a shredder head and/or method of disabling and/or monitoring the thickness of material inserted into a shredder.